Under the Lights (19 page)

And she wondered about Chase. She wouldn't see him tonight. If he did anything besides fall into bed, it would probably involve a hot bath and a muscle rub cream. But she didn't like the awkwardness between them as he'd walked away tonight. Something had changed when he kissed her, and she wasn't sure if it was her or him.

—

O
nce the chaos died down to a dull roar, Chase started walking. He was exhausted. Besides the physical toll the game had taken, his mind was tired of worrying over Kelly McDonnell and her dad.

He'd been so caught up in the fun atmosphere and the high of making a great play, he hadn't even thought twice about what he was going to do. Kelly had been right there on the sideline, laughing and cheering, and he'd had the urge to kiss her.

What he should have done was consider the fact that Edna Beecher and various selectmen would probably be in the stands, and that particular fire didn't need any more fuel. He could have remembered she preferred to keep her private life private, because it was hard enough to get people to respect her. Instead he'd given in to his first instinct and kissed her in front of most of Stewart Mills. And her parents.

By the time he got back to Eagles Lane, he wasn't surprised to see Coach sitting on the porch, waiting for him. It
was obvious he had something on his mind, and Chase was about to get a talking-to. It was a look he'd seen before, on the rare occasion he screwed up at school after making the football team.

Rather than pretend he didn't know it was coming, Chase crossed to Mrs. McDonnell's rocker and sat down. “I guess I've disappointed you.”

“It's not me I'm worried about. And you outgrew having to worry about disappointing me a long time ago.”

“Not really.”

Coach rocked slowly, the old wood creaking. “You plan on staying in Stewart Mills, son?”

“It hadn't really crossed my mind, to be honest. My business—such as it is—is in New Jersey and so is my family. There's nothing for me here.”

“No, I guess there isn't.”

Too late, Chase saw the flashing neon danger sign. If he hadn't been so exhausted, he would have detoured into a change of subject or at least navigated through the conversational hazard a little better.

Coach McDonnell had been asking his intentions toward Kelly and, even though they'd been skirting the issue, Chase hadn't seen the connection until the crash.
There's nothing for me here.

Chase cleared his throat. “Coach, Kelly and I . . . we're not . . . I'm going back to New Jersey.”

“The sooner, the better, from the looks of it,” the man said, and his words sliced through Chase's heart.

“I know I caused her some embarrassment at work,” he said. “And kissing her in front of everybody means people won't forget as fast, but once I'm gone, it'll blow over.”

Coach turned to look at him. “You think I give a damn about her job or Edna Beecher or that Faring woman?”

Chase wasn't sure what to say, because he wasn't totally sure what the other man was getting at. “I don't understand.”

“All that matters to me is Kelly's happiness. Maybe there was a time when I would have been happy to see you and my daughter together, but that was before I saw what a broken heart does to her. When she came home after leaving that bastard and got out of the car, her shoulders were drooped and her head was hung low. I'd never seen her like that, so I went out to meet her and she fell apart. I sat in my goddamn dooryard for a half hour holding my baby girl while she cried for a man who didn't deserve her.”

“I would never cheat on any woman.”

“It wasn't just the cheating. He didn't know what he wanted in life and neither do you. What I want for Kelly is a man who has his shit together and knows exactly what he wants. And it better be her.”

Chase wanted to explain the situation, such as the fact that Kelly knew exactly what she wanted, too, and it wasn't Chase. But he couldn't think of a way to tell a man he loved and respected that his daughter was having sex just for fun—with no plans for a future—that didn't sound crude somehow, so he didn't even try.

“I thought I had my shit together,” he said quietly. “But all I had was a business partner who stole from me, a diamond ring I never got around to giving my girlfriend before she left me for another guy, and a whole lot of people who are disappointed in me, so . . . what the hell do I know, right?”

“When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Great. It was inspirational-quotes time. “Or maybe when
you get knocked down, you make sure you don't drag anybody else with you.”

“That's a sad way of looking at things, son.”

A car pulled up to the curb, horn honking, and Chase turned to see Sam leaning out the passenger window of Alex's rental car while Briscoe waved from the backseat. “Sanders, let's go!”

“Not in the mood, guys.”

“Bullshit,” Alex yelled from the driver's seat. “Get in the car. Owner of the pizza place said there's a pizza and a pitcher of beer waiting for us, on the house. All we have to do is pay for the four other pizzas and two pitchers of beer it'll take to feed us all.”

“That's a helluva bargain.” Now that they mentioned it, a beer would hit the spot right about now. And he hadn't had any supper. While he wasn't really hungry, he should probably force something down. “Coach, you mind?”

He shook his head. “Go have a good time. But do me—and yourself—a favor and don't do anything that'll drag my daughter any further into your mess.”

There was no chance of that, he thought as he shoved Briscoe over so he could get in the backseat. He'd already dragged Kelly down far
enough.

K
elly shoved a soda can into the half-full garbage bag she was dragging around and cursed when some of the sticky fluid ran over her hand. The school administration had agreed to the exhibition game, but not to paying staff to clean up the inevitable mess afterward. In order to make it happen, they'd volunteered to take care of it.

She'd thought the bench area was a mess, but the stands were ten times worse. It's a good thing she wasn't handing out tickets for littering tonight, or they would have had to host another fund-raising festival so the good sloppy folks of Stewart Mills could pay their fines.

As far as Kelly was concerned, they should
all
get trophies when it was over, although Jen's should probably be the biggest. The town had pulled together and dug as deep in their pockets as they could—and it
had
made up the bulk
of the fund—but they wouldn't have made it without Jen's tireless pursuit of gifts and donations from outside Stewart Mills.

Screw trophies, she thought. Maybe her mom would bake them a cake. A big chocolate cake with not a speck of blue, white or gold to be seen.

“Hey, Kel, take a break,” Gretchen said, patting the spot on the bleacher next to her when Kelly got close enough to hear her. “Talk to me for a few minutes.”

Kelly didn't want to talk about that kiss anymore, so if that's what Gretchen was after, she might as well keep picking up garbage. Half the town had asked her about it or commented on it as they made their way out of the stands. She'd even gotten a few congratulations, as if his kissing her in public meant they were engaged.

“I just want to be done with this.”

“I have a question, and now seems like a good time to ask it, since we're alone.”

With a weary sigh, Kelly surrendered to the inevitable and sat down. “If it's about Chase, the answer is
I don't know
.”

“It's not about Chase, but we can circle back to him and that kiss afterward.” She glanced sideways and caught Kelly's expression. “Or maybe not. But I wanted to talk to you about the farm.”

That sounded serious, and Kelly set the garbage bag down next to her feet. “Is everything okay?”

“As okay as ever, I guess.” Which meant on the verge of losing everything, but never quite hitting rock bottom. “But Gram's medicines are starting to add up, and there are more doctor appointments. Even with her assistance, her medical
costs are going to nickel-and-dime us out of house and home. So I was thinking about renting out a room.”

“Renting it out to who?”

“Anybody who needs a room.” Gretchen shrugged. “I'd advertise it. But I wanted to ask you if there's a way to do . . . like a background check or something on people? I don't know what you're allowed to do as favors for people. Or if there's an organization that does it for a small—very small—fee, maybe you could point me to it.”

“The chief really liked your grandfather—hell, he even worked on the farm for a while when he was a teenager, if I remember right—so I'm sure he could help you a little, but are you sure you want to do that? How does Gram feel about having a stranger in the house? She's not a woman who takes well to change.”

“It wouldn't necessarily be a stranger, though. There are a lot of people losing their homes right in our town, never mind surrounding ones.”

“Because they have no work, Gretchen. They're losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages or rent. If you rent a room in your home to somebody you know and then they can't pay, are you going to be able to evict them?”

“I just need a little more income coming in, and I think that would be the easiest way to do it. If I move into the room next to Gram's and rent my room, it has its own bathroom and everything. No kitchen, obviously, but you know how Gram loves to cook. Maybe there could be an extra charge to eat with us and not worry about kitchen privileges.”

“I'll be honest, Gretchen. It makes me nervous. Especially if you just get random strangers answering an ad. I
can't decide if I'm more worried about you renting to a friend who can't pay you or renting to a total stranger.”

“I'm just thinking about it right now. I can only do it if Gram thinks it's okay, and if I know you or the chief can warn us about any red flags. I'm not going to have somebody potentially dangerous in the house with her. But it's not something I'm planning to do tomorrow or anything.”

“We can talk about it again, and we'll do up an income projection and a pros and cons list to make Jen happy, and see if the risk and inconvenience is really worth it.”

“Thanks. Now let's circle back to Chase and that kiss.”

“I'm always circling back to Chase,” Kelly said in a quiet voice. “I can't believe he did that.”

“I thought it was sweet. And very romantic, like a scene out of a movie.”

“And that's bad.”

“It is?”

Kelly sighed and gave her friend a
really?
look. “Of course it's bad.”

“Oh, were you two not doing the fun sex thing anymore?”

“We were doing the fun sex thing earlier today, as a matter of fact. But we weren't doing the
flaunting our fun sex in front of Stewart Mills
thing at all. Or we weren't supposed to be.”

“So you haven't taken your relationship to the next level? Like the actual calling it a relationship level?”

“No, and that was never the plan. You know that.”

Gretchen leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I assumed your original plan would go down in flames. I mean, it's obvious you guys like each other. You're always looking for each other and laughing together. And there's the fun sex thing. Why not call it what it is?”

“Because it can't be that.” She'd been annoyed with Chase since the kiss, but now it gave way to a sense of loss. “Yeah, it's been great and we've had a great time, but it was temporary. He got to leave his life in New Jersey behind for a while, and even I've been out of routine with this whole Eagles Fest thing. It's like a vacation fling that can't be sustained back in the real world.”

“You don't sound like somebody having a fun vacation fling. You sound like somebody who's trying to convince herself that's
all
she's having but doesn't really believe it.”

“I'm going to miss him,” Kelly admitted. Saying it out loud was both a relief and torture. It made his leaving seem even more immediate.

“I hate to state the obvious here, but you could always just . . . have a relationship. So he has to go back to New Jersey for a while. You keep in touch. Call, text, video chat. Maybe meet in the middle at a nice hotel once in a while for the fun sex thing, until you figure out what and where the future is.”

“I'm not taking a chance on an unsettled guy again, and he doesn't even know what he wants. Been there, done that, paid the lawyer fees.” Kelly shook her head. “It's better to part ways now, before we get all emotionally wrapped up in each other.”

“I hate to say it, but I think you're too late.”

Kelly shook her head but didn't waste any more breath denying it. At some point, yeah, her emotions had seeped in, and she cared more about Chase than one probably cared about a random vacation fling.

But that didn't mean she could just lay out her emotions for everybody to see. She'd been a mess after the divorce,
and her friends and family had seen it. She never wanted to be smothered in that much pity and helpfulness ever again. Her time with Chase was coming to an end, and she was going to accept that with dry eyes and her head held high.

—

“Y
ou don't look like a man who's celebrating,” Alex said, pointing a slice of pizza in Chase's direction.

They'd lost the game, so he was a little confused as to what Alex meant by that. “What, exactly, are we celebrating?”

“It's over. All we have to do now is get paraded around town on a float and then we're free to go.”

Sam nodded. “I, for one, am celebrating the fact that I never have to play football again. I'm too old for that shit.”

Chase laughed. “I can't argue with that.”

“It looked like Chase might have more of a reason to celebrate than some other guys,” Briscoe said, raising his eyebrows as if to emphasize the point.

Chase groaned and bit into his pizza. He knew where this was going, and it was nowhere he particularly wanted to go.

“I don't think it was exactly a secret,” Alex said.

“No,” Briscoe admitted. “But it seemed like they were trying to pretend it was.”

“It wasn't a secret,” Chase said. “It wasn't anybody else's business, either.”

“Has Coach said anything about it?” Alex asked. “You were always one of his favorites, but she's his only kid. And a daughter at that.”

“He didn't say much, until tonight when I pretty much
forced him into acknowledging what was going on by kissing her in front of the entire town.”

“And what did he say?”

“I can sum up his thoughts on the matter as the sooner I leave town, the better.”

Sam winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“What family thinks is important, but it's what Kelly wants that really matters,” Briscoe said, probably pulling from all the wisdom that came with being a married man.

Sam must have thought the same thing, because he gave him a dark look. “I know you're doing the 'til-death-do-you-part thing, Briscoe, but not all sex ends in happily ever after. Sometimes it's just sex.”

Briscoe shrugged, not intimidated by Sam at all. “And sometimes it's not.”

Chase didn't tell them Kelly wasn't looking for happily ever after, either. At least not with him. Briscoe had family in town, and Chase didn't want any more gossip going around about Kelly than already was. He'd rather everybody think he was the dumb schmuck who had a shot with her and blew it than have them hold their ridiculous double standards regarding sex against her.

They'd barely finished the pizza when Briscoe was summoned back to his parents' to help wrangle kids while his wife started packing for their trip home. They were hitting the road early in the morning, so he said his good-byes with a lot of handshakes and backslaps, and then it was just Chase, Sam and Alex.

“So what's next for you guys?” he asked them, and they both shrugged.

“I'm heading back to my glamorous life in Texas,” Sam told them, holding up his soda glass as if he were making a toast.

“How the hell did you end up as an oil-field electrician, anyway?” Chase asked.

He shrugged. “I just drove around the country, doing whatever jobs they were hiring for. Ended up in Texas and I like it there. Worked on a ranch when I first got there, but then I found out I don't like cows very much. So I decided to get some education and bump my paychecks up a bit. That's it. How 'bout you, Murph? What's next?”

Alex shook his head, staring into his beer mug. “I'm not sure. I'll head home and do some research. Catch up on the world news and brainstorm a new story to tell. Then try to sell it.”

“You don't get assigned stories to take pictures for?” Chase asked.

“Sometimes publications contact me to ask me to do a story, but I'm freelance, so I can do what moves me. It's getting tough, though. We used to give the world the photographs that illustrated news around the world. Now people on the street are using their phones to upload pictures to social media while the news is still breaking.”

“That sucks.” Sam covered a yawn, but it spread until they were all yawning. “So you looking for a new line of work?”

“No.” Alex was definitely starting to slump in his chair, and Chase knew they weren't much better off, no matter how much he wanted to put off going back to Coach's house. “I don't know how to do anything else, for one thing. And the photos I like to take aren't necessarily breaking news, anyway. I like to use the camera to tell stories, and those
stories don't always have splashy headlines. They're more than a quick flash in the social media pan and sometimes in-depth is still as important as immediate.”

Chase wasn't sure he totally grasped what Alex did, although Mrs. McDonnell had showed him a scrapbook that had some of his pictures, but he knew Murph was good at it. He'd even won some awards. And he traveled a lot.

“You ever think about a wife and kids?” Chase asked him. “Settling down, I mean.”

Alex shook his head. “I had a wife once, actually. She didn't like my lifestyle and, when I wouldn't give up my career, she left me. I've learned it's easier not to have a wife than it is to keep one happy.”

Sam nodded. “What about you, Sanders? What's next on your agenda?”

Not a wife, that was for sure. “I'm heading back to New Jersey. I've got some jobs lined up, and I need to find a new apartment that's substantially cheaper than the last one I had. Downsizing all the way around, I guess.”

Sam gave him a solemn look. “At least you've still got your truck.”

That made Chase laugh. “You've gotta get out of Texas more, my friend.”

He shrugged. “It's a nice truck.”

Chase remembered the way Kelly had teased him about gelding his truck and took a swallow of beer. That was probably one of his favorite things about her. She made him laugh, and he liked that even more than he liked her legs.

“We're heading out about six o'clock Monday morning,” Alex said, “because dumb-ass over here wanted a morning flight. When are you leaving?”

“Not at six in the morning,” Chase said, and they all laughed. “I haven't really thought about it.”

He should think about it soon, though. It was time to go, and no amount of dragging his feet would make it any less painful. Getting up and on the road first thing in the morning would be like ripping a bandage off—it still hurt, but it faded faster.